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Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health

A number of recent studies have shown the importance of the mammalian gut microbiome in host health. In the context of endangered species, a few studies have examined the relationship between the gut microbiome in wild versus captive populations due to digestive and other health issues. Unfortunatel...

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Autores principales: Gibson, Keylie M., Nguyen, Bryan N., Neumann, Laura M., Miller, Michele, Buss, Peter, Daniels, Savel, Ahn, Michelle J., Crandall, Keith A., Pukazhenthi, Budhan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6538756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31138833
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43875-3
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author Gibson, Keylie M.
Nguyen, Bryan N.
Neumann, Laura M.
Miller, Michele
Buss, Peter
Daniels, Savel
Ahn, Michelle J.
Crandall, Keith A.
Pukazhenthi, Budhan
author_facet Gibson, Keylie M.
Nguyen, Bryan N.
Neumann, Laura M.
Miller, Michele
Buss, Peter
Daniels, Savel
Ahn, Michelle J.
Crandall, Keith A.
Pukazhenthi, Budhan
author_sort Gibson, Keylie M.
collection PubMed
description A number of recent studies have shown the importance of the mammalian gut microbiome in host health. In the context of endangered species, a few studies have examined the relationship between the gut microbiome in wild versus captive populations due to digestive and other health issues. Unfortunately, the results seem to vary across taxa in terms of captive animals having higher, lower, or equivalent microbiome diversity relative to their wild counterparts. Here, we focus on the black rhinoceros as captive animals suffer from a number of potentially dietary related health effects. We compared gut microbiomes of wild and captive black rhinos to test for differences in taxonomic diversity (alpha and beta) and in functional diversity of the microbiome. We incorporated a more powerful metagenomic shotgun sequencing approach rather than a targeted amplification of the 16S gene for taxonomic assignment of the microbiome. Our results showed no significant differences in the alpha diversity levels between wild and captive black rhinos, but significant differences in beta diversity. We found that bacterial taxa traditionally associated with ruminant guts of domesticated animals had higher relative abundances in captive rhinos. Our metagenomic sequencing results suggest that unknown gut microbes of wild rhinos are being replaced by those found in conventional human-domesticated livestock. Wild rhinos have significantly different functional bacterial communities compared to their captive counterparts. Functional profiling results showed greater abundance of glycolysis and amino acid synthesis pathways in captive rhino microbiomes, representing an animal receiving sub-optimal nutrition with a readily available source of glucose but possibly an imbalance of necessary macro and micronutrients. Given the differences observed between wild and captive rhino gut microbiomes, we make a number of recommendations for potentially modifying captive gut microbiome to better reflect their wild counterparts and thereby hopefully improve overall rhino health in captivity.
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spelling pubmed-65387562019-06-07 Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health Gibson, Keylie M. Nguyen, Bryan N. Neumann, Laura M. Miller, Michele Buss, Peter Daniels, Savel Ahn, Michelle J. Crandall, Keith A. Pukazhenthi, Budhan Sci Rep Article A number of recent studies have shown the importance of the mammalian gut microbiome in host health. In the context of endangered species, a few studies have examined the relationship between the gut microbiome in wild versus captive populations due to digestive and other health issues. Unfortunately, the results seem to vary across taxa in terms of captive animals having higher, lower, or equivalent microbiome diversity relative to their wild counterparts. Here, we focus on the black rhinoceros as captive animals suffer from a number of potentially dietary related health effects. We compared gut microbiomes of wild and captive black rhinos to test for differences in taxonomic diversity (alpha and beta) and in functional diversity of the microbiome. We incorporated a more powerful metagenomic shotgun sequencing approach rather than a targeted amplification of the 16S gene for taxonomic assignment of the microbiome. Our results showed no significant differences in the alpha diversity levels between wild and captive black rhinos, but significant differences in beta diversity. We found that bacterial taxa traditionally associated with ruminant guts of domesticated animals had higher relative abundances in captive rhinos. Our metagenomic sequencing results suggest that unknown gut microbes of wild rhinos are being replaced by those found in conventional human-domesticated livestock. Wild rhinos have significantly different functional bacterial communities compared to their captive counterparts. Functional profiling results showed greater abundance of glycolysis and amino acid synthesis pathways in captive rhino microbiomes, representing an animal receiving sub-optimal nutrition with a readily available source of glucose but possibly an imbalance of necessary macro and micronutrients. Given the differences observed between wild and captive rhino gut microbiomes, we make a number of recommendations for potentially modifying captive gut microbiome to better reflect their wild counterparts and thereby hopefully improve overall rhino health in captivity. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-05-28 /pmc/articles/PMC6538756/ /pubmed/31138833 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43875-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Gibson, Keylie M.
Nguyen, Bryan N.
Neumann, Laura M.
Miller, Michele
Buss, Peter
Daniels, Savel
Ahn, Michelle J.
Crandall, Keith A.
Pukazhenthi, Budhan
Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health
title Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health
title_full Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health
title_fullStr Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health
title_full_unstemmed Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health
title_short Gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health
title_sort gut microbiome differences between wild and captive black rhinoceros – implications for rhino health
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6538756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31138833
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43875-3
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